Beach Holidays: Thanksgiving!

<<In the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday, I thought it appropriate to pluck from the annals of my military spouse newsletters a column I’d written about the finer points of table etiquette. It just goes to prove that I learn something new every day!>>

“Passing Directions…

Which Are in No Way Connected to Driving a Motor Vehicle.”

'Tis the season…for holiday gatherings which involve too much food and not enough etiquette, much like the one I recently experienced during a large gathering of our navy family.  There were twenty people seated around one long table, which had been festooned with Lenox China, Waterford crystal and more forks, knives and spoons than I knew what to do with.  But despite the formal setting, there were no butlers dancing attendance, so the meal was served “Family Style.”  This requires the passing of the food around the table for each diner to pile mountains of gastronomic pleasures onto their own plate.

Beach Writers: November Starter Sentence

<<For those of you new to my blog, every month my Writer's Guild gives a starter sentence and off we go writing a very short story. The part that got us started is in bold italics...feel free to use it to jump start your muses this holiday season!>>

     The turkey was delicious, but something tasted funny about the gravy.  Then all of a sudden Aunt Mable clutched at her throat then fell face down in her mashed potatoes.  We all stopped eating and stared at the dear old woman, watching as golden gravy oozed through her blue-tint hair.   Nobody rushed to her rescue, nobody reached over to pick her head out of her plate, nobody called 9-1-1.  In fact, nobody seemed dismayed in the least at this turn of events, just waited quietly for something else to happen.

     This was my first holiday with the Callahan clan. Was it part of their Thanksgiving tradition to have someone take a nose-dive into the feast? I looked across the table at my fiancé Mark.  Our eyes met.  Did I detect a twinkle in those baby blues? With great exaggeration he mouthed, “Wait for it.” Thirty seconds later, Aunt Mable popped her head up and yelled “April Fools!”  Everyone laughed and clapped and agreed that it’s cute when a one-hundred-and-three year old woman confuses her holidays.

You can read other guild members' musings here:  http://eastbeachwritersguild.blogspot.com/p/starter-sentences.html

The December starter sentence is: "The tree we bought smelled great..." Go ahead and give it a try yourself!

Beach Writers: October Starter Sentence

East Beach Writer's Guild got us started writing this month with " 'Twas the night before Halloween..."  As always, it was a fun challenge, and got me in the mood for the upcoming holiday! 

‘Twas the night before Halloween and a thick fog rolled in.  So thick, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, let alone the lamppost whose black paint had faded to a mottled grey, thanks to the constant sandblasting by the wind off the Chesapeake Bay.  So that’s how I ended up in the ER, with a goose egg on my forehead, on account of I’d been running, and smacked right into the damned thing.  “Why were you running in the fog?” one might ask. A valid question.

  

Beach Writers: September Starter Sentence

For the record, I NEVER hated writing.  But since Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, went to High School with me, I thought the cartoon appropriate to depict me doing my writing homework.  You see, as if I didn't have enough to do in my "real" life, I helped found a neighborhood writer's guild.  One of the challenges at each meeting is to write 2 paragraphs that follow a starter sentence.  The September prompt was "Last night while walking through East Beach..."  This is what my muses came up with.  

     Last night while walking through East Beach, a glint of white caught my eye.  There, peeking out through the mulch piled around Mrs. Dietrich’s Klems Hardy Gardenias.  I stopped and picked up a tile, about the size of a domino only twice as thick.  I turned the cool and smooth item in my hand as I walked.  Within a few steps I was near enough a streetlight to stop and inspect the tile closer.  Hmmm.  One side had markings.  Chinese characters, to be specific, in blood-red ink.  But having never taken a single lesson in Chinese, the symbols meant nothing to me. 

Beach Essay: WHAT I DID ON SUMMER VACATION...IN 1972

<<Cross-posted on Virginia Is for Mysteries blog August 10, 2013>>

The “educational” tag is SO over rated.  Especially when it comes to summer vacations.  My parents (a self-employed business man and an elementary school teacher) made it their mission to make sure we learned something over the summer break.  So while my friends were water skiing on Lake Michigan or riding donkeys down to bottom of the Grand Canyon or hanging out with Mickey & Minnie, my family was marching through the Smithsonian in DC or traipsing along the Freedom Trail in Boston or sitting/snoozing through historical lectures in the City of Brotherly Love. 

Did I have VA-CAY Envy?  You bet I did!

Virginia is for Mysteries Blog

Hey...I don't think I mentioned that the 14 Virginia Authors included in the Virginia is for Mysteries anthology have started a blog about all things Virginia and/or writing.  Today was my day to post something inspirational.  It took a lot of thinking...and waiting for inspiration to hit.  Finally, after three chocolate kisses, the muses were summoned and I came up with a little thing I like to (appropriately) call,  "What I Did on Summer Vacation...1971."  If you want to see a picture of 10-year-old me, then click here.    

Beach Craft: Life's a Beach

This is the view when you come in the back door of our little beach cottage.  So while life is not always a "vacation," at least every time it feels like one!

But this is what it looked like before I got crafty: